Friday, May 30, 2008

Google changed its favicon

Google has just changed its uppercase “G” favicon to a lower-case “g” favicon shows in address bar, in browser's tabs and in the list of bookmarks.

Old favicon New favicon

As with standard size of favicons, the new favicon is 16x16 and hosted under "favicon.ico".

A little bit focusing on why Google changed its favicon makes a lot of sense: Google loves numbers, Google plays with numbers, Google is aiming to be a sense of something that never ends, so the philosophy of eternity and infinity. Regarding this the new favicon interprets infinity "". It's just chosen because it was easy to rotate an "8" character by 90° when typesetting was done by hand. The symbol is sometimes called a "lazy eight", evoking the image of an "8" lying on its side.
What Google actually has done is to re-rotate(turn back) the symbol to earlier version, so "" to "8" as it was. Beyond this, the "8" interprets the lower-case favicon "g".
Another interpretation is that the infinity symbol is a clear depiction of the hourglass turned 90°. Obviously, this action would cause the hourglass to take infinite time to empty thus presenting a tangible example of infinity. The invention of the hourglass predates the existence of the infinity symbol allowing this theory to be plausible.

Well, Google never ends ...

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're going around posting this claim all over the place. Do you actually have any basis for it? I can't see that you have any proof other than your own speculation.

Anonymous said...

I'm with Scottie on this one. This is pretty much the most reaching I've seen to explain something that is pretty clearly just a logo change; no one suspects that Coca-Cola has hidden symbolism in their intentions when they change the bottle layout every year or so.

Anonymous said...

I can't compare Google with firms like Coca-Cola that "change just a logo or the bottle layout" per year. I think, Google doesn't do anything without having reasons! I also think, Google is based on big reasons. Beyond this, I'm actually a simple Googler having no basis(what for basis at all?). I love Google and I'd like to write about Google as well. Obviously, I'm improving myself by writing about Google's new things, so I get to know Google every time as well as before. Anyway, no one suspects Google here! I only write my own opinion.
Cheers

Anonymous said...

... or another interpretation is that it is part of a much bigger change?

Anonymous said...

Google would really want to change the uppercase “G” to the lower-case “g”, so "google".Thanks for video.